Frankie is my daughter. She is 7 years old and she is a bit of a “scammer.”

Scamming, if you’re not familiar, is a lot like lying but it’s done in a way that isn’t as obvious, or at least it’s not meant to be. Frankie scams quite a bit, so I’m sure she gets away with it here and there (law of averages) but I do catch her a lot. Sometimes I’ll blow her cover on the spot and sometimes I’ll act clueless—and then I’ll bust her later just to mess with her. Keep reading this post »

Last month my 7 year old daughter, Frankie, got stung by a bee. The story goes that the bee was buzzing around her but she stayed really still and he left, but then he came back and without her knowing he hid inside her pants until she was inside, waited until she was happily sitting on her sister’s bed playing some game or something, and he stung her on the leg.

It hurt my daughter when she got stung. Poor kid. Getting stung by a bee hurts. I haven’t been stung since I was a kid myself, but I remember it NOT fondly, and if I could go through life without it ever happening again, that would be great.

But let’s be honest, getting stung by a bee isn’t the worst thing ever. There are worse things. I gotta believe getting something cut off, like a finger, would be worse. Keep reading this post »

There is a Part 1 to this. You should read that first. I guess you don’t have to, but I would.

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There is a kind of “detox” that campers go through when they first get to camp, and then, when they get home, they have to go through it all over again. One of my friends refers to it as “re-entry.“ She’s right. Coming off a camp high is not easy, and even though you know it’s coming, it still feels very sudden.

For many campers, camp is their second home but still, after not being there for several months, it takes a minute to adjust. It’s actually the same for the staff—especially new staff who have never worked at an overnight camp before. They get to camp and they’re like “What the hell is THIS place??” Getting used to camp is like taking your glasses off after wearing them all day. It‘s going to take a minute, or a few days. Keep reading this post »

I can’t believe another camp season is drawing to a close. It feels like we just got here, like the busses rolled in yesterday! “The days are long, the weeks are short.” That’s what we say at camp, because it’s true.

Every summer is a new beginning and every person (staff member or camper) starts with a blank canvas. Sure, everyone comes to camp with his or her own history and inherent set of values, but once they get here, they get to reinvent themselves. A kid who has never liked to swim might swim around the whole lake and a staff member who has never been on stage might end up in a bathing suit and boa for an evening program.

It’s no secret that we hold our staff to very high standards (I’m sure all camps do) but it really all boils down to common sense. No matter what job you do at camp, there are (from my vantage point) three simple rules to follow: Keep reading this post »

It’s “Mailbag Monday!” Below are some of the topics/questions that were sent in and up for discussion this week. Feel free to agree, disagree, add on, whatever you want. Here we go:

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–When did all of this anti-Semitism begin?

Anti-Semitism (hatred of Jewish people) started forever ago, but I’m sure the person asking the question is referring to the current wave sweeping through parts of Europe. I’m not sure if what’s happening (violence, threats, hate speech) is because a bunch Jew hating losers are using the Hamas-Israeli war as a platform to be open and violent about their hatred, or maybe it’s a bunch of new dumb asses who are looking for people to hate and following someone else’s lead…? Either way, there is some crazy stuff happening there! The NY Times reported that a rabbi in Frankfurt, Germany got a phone call saying that if any of the caller’s family in Gaza was harmed, 30 Frankfurt Jews would be killed.

WHAT? How in the hell is a RABBI supposed to control whether the caller’s people will or will not be harmed? That’s just insane and, quite frankly, a lot of responsibility to put on one person. What kind of phone call is that ANYWAY?? I don’t care what religion you are, getting a phone call like that is just not right.

Right?

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–If you saw a kid acting up and being really loud in a restaurant, would you do something or would you just ignore it?

CAN you ignore it? Is it “ignorable” or is it ruining your dining experience? If I’m out with my friends or family and we’re in a restaurant and some kid going bat s**t crazy, I’ll give the parent the benefit of the doubt (the parent is entitled to figure out a good strategy to end the madness) but, honestly, if it’s going on for a long time, then yes, I probably will do something. I can’t help it. I can’t deal with all that craziness while I’m trying to eat and if the parent is not doing anything to diffuse the situation, well that’s not fair to anyone in the restaurant. I already had kids that age so I get it, I was there—and I still say take care of your kid, DO SOMETHING, especially if it’s a kid who’s at an age where he can be reasoned with. Sorry mommy, but I’m paying to be here. Why should I spend my hard-earned money on a front row seat to your kid’s meltdown? I’m here to eat; I don’t even know your kid.

But there is a good chance that I will get to meet him because if he doesn’t shut it soon, I’m going to your table and in a really high-pitched voice that kids and dogs love I will say “What’s going on, little man?? What’s wrong?” and the kid will be like “Who the hell is THIS lady???” and I will start asking a bunch of questions about why he’s so upset, then I’ll commiserate with him and spew a whole bunch of crap like “I know, little man. It’s all going to be OK,” and then…it’s the craziest thing ever…but he stops. He stops!!

Sometimes a “new person” is all the kid needs to shut him up. Parents become white noise to kids after awhile so even if the parent is doing and saying all the right things, the kid is not listening or caring. But a different person? A different voice? That can totally baffle a kid and, in the end, it all works out because the meltdown is over, the mom is done stressing, and I can get back to stuffing my face.

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–Kids and Masturbation

YAY!! Masturbation talk! Always so FRESH!! A few weeks ago I re-released an old post called The Gynie Monologues, and even as I re-read it, I felt dirty. Not dirty like “dirty mind” but dirty like I needed to wash up after. Masturbation isn’t so much “dirty in the head” at it is just “dirty.” Even if you’re a girl and you skip the whole “sock deposit” that boys do, you still have to clean up after.

Masturbation, in and of itself, is a natural thing. It’s really not a big deal unless you make it one. I have two little girls and right now they’re not at a place where they are masturbating, but my 5 year old is ALL ABOUT her vagina. (va-GI-na. Seriously, who thought of that word? And PE-NIS? That‘s not much better.) Anyway, the 5 year old, she loves her gynie. I think I mentioned in a different post that sometimes at night when she is going bananas, she plays it like it’s a guitar. She still does that. She will take a huge leap half way across the room, land on her feet and start playing her gynie like she’s Pete Townsend from The Who. Then she’ll butt up against her 7 year old sister and start rubbing her tushie on her. The 7 year old is all “Quit rubbing me with your gynie and your tushie!!” But she doesn’t quit. She just switches sides.

That’s where my kids are right now. They may get to a place in their lives when they start “experimenting” with themselves, and that’s cool. I don’t know exactly what I will do because I‘m not there yet, but I will probably just tell them to be discreet, and when they’re done, to wash their hands really well. With soap.

You can send in “Mailbag Monday” questions or topics anytime to robyn@dimsumanddoughnuts.com or any of the links below. Thank you so much for being here!

I have been going back and forth about whether or not I should discuss the Israeli-Hamas war on Dim Sum and Doughnuts. It’s not a topic I feel totally comfortable with for the following reasons:

A) There are lots of different perspectives out there.

B) I have been living at an overnight camp for the last few months so my knowledge of what is happening in the real world is somewhat limited. The current events in my world are more along the lines of whether we’re having chicken nuggets or mac & cheese for lunch today.

Still, I have to say something about this. How can I not? To not acknowledge it would be, well, to not acknowledge it—and I don’t want to do that. It’s real and it’s ON, so here I go: Keep reading this post »

Have you ever played Pictionary? Well, I haven’t. Except for this week, I kind of did.

I got together with Danielle Herzog, author of “Martinis and Minivans” and she came up with a game for us. Danielle Herzog is the blogger behind Martinis and Minivans. It’s a blog for anyone who has ever needed a martini after driving a minivan around all day. Or for anyone who has just ever needed a martini. She’s a freelance writer and mother of two that has written for the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, The Huffington Post, AOL, and other local and national sites. She also writes a weekly parenting slightly-sarcastic advice column called “The Sassy Housewife” for the Omaha World-Herald’s parenting site, Momaha.

Danielle and I never came up with a name for this game but this is what we did:

We had both of our 5 year old girls draw pictures from a movie (anything but FROZEN…please, not Frozen) and our job was to guess the movie. This is what Danielle’s daughter drew: Keep reading this post »

Last weekend, my brother-in-law got married to an amazing girl. In her wedding speech, she said that she never uses the word “hate.” I loved that. When I was a kid, my dad never let us say “hate” either—he’d always say “Hate’s a pretty strong word,“ so it made us realize that we didn’t really “hate,“ we just “couldn’t stand.” But now, many years later, I say “hate.” I kind of say it a lot, but it’s not my fault. It’s all the bad drivers out there. They are the ones who are making me say it—and these are the 6 who are making me say it the most: Keep reading this post »